The Great Western Railway
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Brunel did not let the problems with his suspension bridge slow him down. In 1833 he began work on one of his greatest feats: the construction of the Great Western Railway (GWR) from London to Bristol, and beyond.
When it first opened in 1838, the GWR only ran to Maidenhead, where Brunel built a majestic railway bridge of two great brick arches. It was the widest bridge in the world at the time, and inspired Turner’s famous romantic painting Rain, Steam and Speed.
Sixteen years later Brunel’s grand new station at Paddington opened, “a cathedral of iron and glass”. Passengers on the GWR would now start their journey from London in style.
Before the railways, post had been carried on horse-drawn mail coaches, often slowed by bad weather or poor roads. An industrial fervour saw rail lines rapidly built, then linked, to form a new transport network spanning the country, and post could be delivered at much greater speed.
As early as 1838, carriages were specially built so that mail could be sorted on the move. Mail was carried on GWR trains from February 1840 and when the line extended through Bristol in 1841, four sorting carriages were ordered by the Postmaster General. The journey from London to Bristol now took just 4½ hours.
